Chapter 17
At the airport, Lucy combed every crowded gate, worried Adam would show up.
She hunted for his dark suit near the check-in desks, for any sign he’d carried the morning’s rupture away as deeply as she had.
Each time she failed to see him, shame prickled up her spine, chased by anger at herself for secretly hoping he’d ignore another refusal, that he’d relent and follow her.
Steven claimed the window seat on the plane, propping his injured foot into the aisle.
He dozed almost at once, the rhythm of the plane lulling him into unconsciousness.
Lucy watched the clouds drift below, an ocean of mist beneath the wing.
Across the aisle, a man folded a newspaper over a headline.
After they got off the plane, their car climbed into Astoria, stopping in front of Steven’s third-floor walk-up: a building with a reputation for cruel staircases.
He insisted he could manage the steps—crutch dangling from one arm, a suitcase balanced in the other, a paper bag of pills clutched at his side.
Lucy didn’t trust his swagger. She wrested the luggage from him before his pride triggered another calamity.
Inside, the apartment felt both small and stubbornly alive.
Family photographs crowded one wall above a green sofa—Steven with his parents, Steven with Karina—while shelves overflowed with medical textbooks, mystery novels, and every now-and-then a chipped mug.
Six potted plants angled toward the windows: a silent chorus of hope, leaning toward whatever light they could find.
“Karina waters them when I’m away,” Steven said softly when Lucy knelt to touch damp soil. He set his crutch beside the couch and studied the plants as though they’d betrayed him by thriving through his absence. “She has a key.”
Lucy flicked a glance at him. “We can change the locks.”
Her suggestion hung between them, startling in its blunt practicality. Steven’s face flickered with grief—tight muscles around his eyes—and he tilted his head. “Not today.”
They accepted an unspoken truce. He slept on the sofa; Lucy took the tiny bedroom.
The sheets smelled faintly of laundry soap.
On the bedside table stood a framed photograph of Steven and Karina, sunburned, laughing.
Karina’s cut was raw-edged, her hair dark blond; Steven’s was embarrassingly worse—cropped too short.
Lucy flipped the frame facedown, but a minute later guilt made her right it again.
That night, her phone buzzed once. The message preview read: Please don’t shut me out. We need to talk.
She stared at it until the screen dimmed. She tucked the phone away without replying.
Dawn brought Steven’s mother to the apartment.
Gloria Driver arrived with enough groceries to feed an emergency shelter, bustling into the apartment with her usual energy.
She checked her son’s ankle, filled the refrigerator, and greeted Lucy with a hug so firm it almost rattled her spine.
Then she eyed the row of shoes and coats by the door.
“Where’s Karina?” she asked as though the woman were late for cocktail hour rather than two time zones away.
Steven drew a breath and braced himself. “Karina’s still in Miami—there was an issue with the excursion.”
Gloria lifted a container of yogurt and peered over the label. “Oh dear. That must be hard for her.” She looked at Lucy, then back at Steven.
He let out a slow sigh, like deflating. “There’s something else you should know. We’re not together anymore.” He looked at Lucy for strength. “We never were, actually.
Gloria blinked. The words landed in the room with no fanfare—just the hum of the refrigerator. “What are you talking about?”
Lucy stood, ready to escape the tension, but Steven caught her wrist with a gentle grip that begged Stay.
He began to explain, stumbling over the chronology. He finally said the word—gay—only after Gloria looked at him so helplessly confused that he realized he must save her from the pity condolences. His voice wavered then, the old anger dissipating into fear.
Gloria sat at the small kitchen table. She pressed her hands to her mouth. For a moment Lucy couldn’t tell whether she was on the brink of laughter or tears. Then a sound emerged—a mixture of both.
“I told your aunt you and Karina would have beautiful grandchildren,” Gloria said, almost to herself. She folded into a posture that made her seem smaller, vulnerable for the first time. “This is what you’re worried about?”
Steven closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Oh, honey.” She rose and wrapped him in an embrace that somehow balanced care and love. “I know why you didn’t want to tell your father— but I wish you’d told me.”
Lucy slipped away to the living room, feeling like a guest at someone else’s reconciliation. Behind the closed door, she heard Steven and his mother talk, their voices softer now.
Afterward, Lucy checked her phone. Adam’s photograph from the cruise still stared up at her.
She opened her email and found another apology from Adam. Then, the property manager of their apartment letting her know Adam had transferred six months’ rent into escrow and authorized her to handle the lease alone. His belongings would be removed by week’s end unless she declined.
He’d organized everything—exactly what she’d barked at him to do in the terminal, without waiting to see if she actually meant it. A fresh wave of resentment rose.
She stayed in Steven’s apartment two nights more.
Gloria visited each day—bringing food, asking questions—and each evening she called her husband from the hallway, as if relaying a play-by-play.
Steven practiced telling his father bits of his truth, discarding the lines that sounded false until only the real ones remained.
On the third morning, Lucy took a cab back to the apartment she’d shared with Adam. The doorman’s face brightened to see her.
Inside, the place looked almost unchanged.
Adam’s shoes were gone; his coats had vanished; his coffee mug was absent from the drying rack.
The emptiness was discreet: the drawer where he kept pens now held a single notebook, the side of the bed he used lay untouched except for her lamp, still tilted where she liked it.
On the stove sat their yellow kettle—dented above the base from the fight when he insisted he could fix the loose handle himself.
Beside it, a new box of her favorite tea.
On the counter lay a handwritten inventory of everything he’d removed: books, records, kitchen gadgets—plus a note that her tax papers and grandmother’s jewelry remained locked in the safe.
The list was all business—no apology. At the bottom in tidy script: Anything you want, it’s yours. Including me.
Lucy closed her eyes. Tears pricked at the corners, and she let them fall. She missed the weight of Adam beside her in their bed, the way he’d hum off-key while making coffee, the particular scent of his skin after a long run. She loved him with a stubborn ache that hadn’t dulled.
But love wasn’t the question. The question was whether she could ever trust him again.
Could she trust him to be there when she needed him?
When it wasn’t convenient for him?
When it was easier to believe someone else?
Love was the easy part. Trust remained elusive.